By Jacqueline Goyette

The winding roads of Spello are new to us at this hour, and the city itself transforms, fairy-tale like: blows kisses, morphs frog into prince, pumpkin into carriage. We move. This, our first vacation of August, we drive and drive — past aqueducts and churches, centuries of piled-up stones that will be visible in the morning, fields and the stepladder of this village: the brick by brick, the pink and white of city walls, the way the sun played kaleidoscope games on the ancient stones all afternoon and here, now, those games are over. Here it is only dust and night and the light that comes down in ringlets from street lamps, the Italian voices of my husband, my brother-in-law and his wife forming tiny echoes in a speeding car. The moon is off somewhere, distracted. The stars too — in their own pinpricked worlds.

Later in our air conditioned dreams at the hotel where we’re staying, maybe all of the city will come back, in hexagon towers, in painted walls bejeweled with blessings, in stones carved into churches in the piazza. Later in our dreams, we will chip away at the Pinturicchio frescoes in the Baglioni chapel, fit each bright piece into the pockets of our backpacks. We will swim in the hotel pool — freestyle with the backdrop of the valley behind us. Later in our dreams I will remember the train ride into this country on my very first day ever, twenty years ago. The way Rome is the same in the light and the darkness. The footfall, the roll of suitcases across cobblestones, the Tiber River when it twinkles. The way language echoes and halts. How hard it is to pick it up off the train station floor when you are only nineteen. As if it is any easier now, with these knees that ache when they bend.

But here at midnight in the car, my sister-in-law Stefania asks if there is more than this road, this tumble of stones, the curve of this city wall. What are all those lights in the valley? Do they go on forever? I don’t know. Once I was told that even the lakes of this region had entire cities beneath them, and they were emptied out, abandoned and then flooded, but you cannot remove the ghost from the stone itself, you cannot expect the city to not howl anymore, not bake the bread, not send the letters, not ring the church bells. Not fill the streets with tender marches on the holy days. Tonight the valley sparkles as if we could pick up each light, pluck entire cities up and place them in our purses, all of Italy that fits snugly in our car. I tell Stefania that the answer is yes, they do go on forever. She is quiet. We all are. Tomorrow we will be sunburnt again, but tonight, the wind rushes past as it has always done, whispers a little, and in the distance, it howls.

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Jacqueline Goyette is a writer from Indianapolis, Indiana. Her writing appears in both print and online journals, including Tahoma Literary Review, Phoebe Journal, Stanchion, The Citron Review, Bending Genres, and Centaur Lit. Her work is also featured in the 2025 Best Small Fictions anthology and has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Microfiction. She currently lives in the town of Macerata, Italy, with her husband Antonello and her cat Cardamom.